


Requiem

by writelikeitsgoingoutofstyle (twoandahalfslytherins)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Aaron Centric, Angst, Eliza and Alex are together but it isn't a ship fic so I didn't super mark it, Grief/Mourning, Reincarnation AU, They work at a history museum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 02:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12355971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoandahalfslytherins/pseuds/writelikeitsgoingoutofstyle
Summary: ‘Can’t blame a lil one for being all mixed up when his momma’s gone,’ his grandmother would say to anyone who stood too close. ‘Mommas are the ones who stitch things together. Make the world right for young boys, they do.’





	Requiem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pennylehane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennylehane/gifts).



According to the social worker, they spent two weeks searching for his mom by the name ‘Theodosia’ before someone at the school called him in missing.

This is not her name. 

Her name is a sound he no longer remembers; her face, only viewed through smudged glass. If she ever spoke his name aloud, he has no memory of it.

His mother is a vase on his grandparents’ fireplace. The nice lady in the suit explains to the adults over his head that his grandmother is sick. Hadn’t even noticed his absence, but that if she gets better, he can go back to her. 

In the meantime, Charles is a very confused little boy in need of some tender love and care. She says they’re welcome to check in with her whenever they need, and that she’s willing to share as much as she can with them from his case file. 

The social worker’s hand on his shoulder is unwelcome, but it doesn’t bite as much as her words. A reminder for them not to worry, that it’s normal for children from traumatic backgrounds to concoct fantasies to cope. Theodosia is probably just an imaginary friend, though they’re welcome to try and get him to talk about her more if they’d like.

‘Can’t blame a lil one for being all mixed up when his momma’s gone,’ his grandmother would say to anyone who stood too close. ‘Mommas are the ones who stitch things together. Make the world right for young boys, they do.’

When they look down at him, he pulls out his best church smile, the same one she made him practice in the mirror. 

\----

“When I was your age,” Mr. Henderson says, “I liked to play baseball with my dad. Did you ever play ball with your dad?”

Charles thinks of the old men at the church playing chess. Their bits of wisdom and deep laughter. The way they patted their knees and pulled him in to join them, to try and teach him the rules. Of an older man in a soldier’s uniform tossing a ball with teenagers between tents, the clothes always just not quite right. Details just a little too blurry to be real.

When it becomes clear he isn’t going to answer, Mr. Henderson continues, “Do you think you’d like to play ball with me?”

Mr. Henderson ruffles his shirt when Charles shakes his head. “That’s okay. But we should find something to do together before you start school in the fall.”

Mrs. Henderson ends up chiding him for how much time they spend at the history museum that summer. Can’t believe that a growing boy would be that interested in the dust and cobwebs.

\----

These days, when Mrs. Henderson wakes him up, he doesn’t bother asking what woke her. Sometimes his throat is raw enough to let him know it was the screaming, sometimes he is a tangle of limbs on the floor. No matter what, he is grateful for her hand on his shoulder.

Even more grateful for the way she slips out of the room, lets him collect his sweat-soaked sheets in peace. She’s a good woman. There’s always a tiny water bottle on his dresser and a small snack when he gets back from the shower and he doesn’t know how to thank her.

Doesn’t know how to explain what’s going on, knows she must wonder.

Knows what she must assume, given where he’s from.

But how is he supposed to tell her that he is not dreaming of hands or gut-wrenching hunger but of counting and gunpowder?

\----

There’s a cake on the table, and it takes the candles and the envelope for him to realize what must be happening.

Mrs. Henderson smiles up at him, eyes bright with tears.

It’s a little silly to be celebrating like this, but at least this is the most of the fuss. There doesn’t seem to be a crowd of people he barely knows waiting in the hallway. No marching band ready to leap into song.

Just a letter and a cake proclaiming to the world that ‘Charles Jacobs’ would be henceforth known as ‘Aaron Henderson’. 

Mr. Henderson clamps a hand on his shoulder. Welcomes him to his new life. On breaking all the ties from the old one.

Aaron wishes he knew how to do that. But there isn’t a bonfire big enough for the puzzle piece memories in his head. 

\----

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Winston, his APUSH teacher, frowns as she says it. “You get such good marks, Ch- Aaron. Such good marks on everything else. Is something going on at home?”

Aaron. Aaron is a name she has not said aloud yet, not even when it appeared in the textbook. Brushed over it, an assigned ‘to read’ section unlikely to show up on the test. Aaron’s grateful for this because it rocks his core when she does, causes something he can’t place to start twisting inside of him. Or rather, draws his attention to the twisting. It isn't the first time he's noticed it, after all. There's something about this unit that rubs at him the wrong way, makes it hard for to focus.

Aaron can't say that, though. How can he explain the connection he feels? The guilt? The anger?

He can't. Not without another visit to another doctor that he doesn't want to see. Which leaves him coming up with reasons that have nothing to do with the revolutionary war.

Mrs. Henderson switched jobs. Mr. Henderson’s father just passed away. He tells her these things and lets her squeeze his shoulder, offer him words of wisdom about it being okay that he doesn’t grieve the same way his foster father does.

Aaron smiles his best church smile, lets her call it putting on a brave face. 

\----

It’s pointless, he knows, looking for her.

But Aaron also knows he’s lying if he claims he’s sitting in this coffee house because he likes the poetry. Maybe it isn’t real. Maybe the therapist, the one with the curly red hair, had been right. That his mother had kept a book around the house, told him bedtime stories from it. Maybe these memories aren’t memories, just the desperation of a child trying to hold onto what wisps he has left.

Fraying at the seams without a momma to make sense of things.

The ship is just a reoccurring nightmare. The way he panics at beaches is not a sign of anything. His hatred of guns is a natural response. It is all just anxiety. Something that might be cured if he would touch the bottles he’s been prescribed.

Aaron flips to a new page in his notebook, gets ready to conjugate another set of words. 

Real or not, he has things to do in the here and now. Can’t keep getting caught up in his head when there are finals around the corner. 

\----

“I see you interned at the Historic Senate House in Kingston, that’s very impressive.”

Aaron doesn’t shift, though he wants to. Just smiles and talks about the director he worked under, talks about the projects, the reenactments. 

“To go from such an active role to one more behind the scenes--”

One where he won’t have to dress in another skin every day, one where the names won’t haunt his dreams-- where he won’t have to see her, see the minature-- be reminded-- 

Aaron laughs, rubs the back of his head, a facsimile of sheepish. “There’s just something so fascinating about the details that aren’t ready for the public yet. It’s beautiful, inviting the world to see what history was like, but I think I’d like to spend a while unearthing those details so to speak.”

It must be an acceptable answer because he’s hired the next week.

\----

“Mr. Henderson-” Aaron lifts his gaze, smiles at the new girl in acknowledgment. “I was wondering if you could show me to my office?”

“It’s a bit of a maze down here,” he offers in lieu of an apology as he stands. “I’m just impressed the museum finally gave in and hired another archivist.”

Rumor has it there’s another new hire on the way, though he can’t imagine it being an archivist. Aaron’s been working down here alone for three years and while the workload has picked up in the last year or so, it hasn’t tripled. 

She talks as they walk and Aaron listens with half an ear to her specialty and where she’d done her internships. He prefers to let the quality of a person’s work speak for itself when it comes to this sort of thing.

There’s a door at the end of the hall, the room that it’d been easiest to clear enough stuff out of to fit a desk, and Aaron pushes on it.

Tries not to stare when the first thing she does is remove three dolls from her bag and place them up on the filing cabinet. She smiles when she catches him, not even bothering to look ashamed. “I’ll have to bring more later, but I think trinkets make the room a little less bleak. Do you keep anything on your desk? A photo of your family?”

Aaron thinks of the book in his bottom desk drawer. The one he never opens.

Shakes his head.

\---

“You’ll like him,” the new girl, Anna, tells him. “I went to school with him, we applied for the job openings together.”

Aaron doesn’t tell her that as an archivist he has little reason to deal with any educators that the museum might bring in. Or the fact that his eyes flicker over the nameplate by her door still when he needs to enter. As much as he appreciates the extra hands, he’s never been one to consider colleagues friends.

They’ve barely made it up the stairs when Anna breaks away, darting to hug the newest member of the team. Aaron doesn’t ask the obvious question, doesn’t look to see if there are rings, if there’s a reason they wanted to work together. Just allows himself to be grateful he’s the only one there, that they won’t be chastised for making a scene.

“Eric, this is Aaron,” Anna beckons Aaron closer, seemingly aware of his discomfort. “Aaron can be a bit shy, but he’s a really great guy.”

Shy isn’t the word he’s used to being applied to him but arguing would be absurd. Instead he shakes Eric’s hand, smiling through his teeth when the man launches into asking for Aaron’s help with a passion project he’s been working on for a while. 

Unspoken gay heroes throughout early American history.

That night when Aaron wakes up in a cold sweat, he forcibly blocks whatever woke him out of his mind. It’s been too many years, he’s come too far to go back now. 

\---

Later, much later, Aaron will lie and say that he saw it coming.

That Eric’s obsession with the American Revolution and Anna’s dolls gave them away. That there was something about the things they said, the way they moved, too young for their relationship to be that mature. That he placed the nightmares right away. 

None of this is true. 

Instead, it hits him all at once.

Aaron’s halfway to his car when he realizes that his keys are on his desk.

He notices them, of course, wrapped up in one another, staring down at some portrait or another. Thinks nothing of it, considers it them trying to get some work done without giving up the time they could have together at home. He does his best not to disturb them, after all, he’s only going to be there for a moment--

“You were so handsome back then,” Anna murmurs, gloved fingers still not quite touching the canvas and it’s just strange enough of a sentence that Aaron fumbles. Drops his keys again and there’s scuffling outside. He waits a beat longer, for them to finish retreating, before he exits.

Feels the whole world slide away when he sees what’s on the table.

\---

“Well, if it isn’t Aaron Henderson,” Eric says as he drops a package on Aaron’s desk. Eric. Because the man in front of him is Eric, not Alexander Hamilton. Because Aaron’s last name is Henderson, not Burr. “When’s the last time you decided to see the sunlight?”

Aaron resists the urge to glance at the calendar. Truth is, he’s unsure. Last week? The week before? There’d been a flood, which usually wouldn’t be an issue for the museum, but right now his back table is covered in attempts to salvage journals. 

His least favorite kind, too. Not that he needs to worry about the contents just yet. All he knows for certain is that their owner had recently come into possession of her late grandfather’s collection and thought they might be of some value. If not to this museum, perhaps another, one with more of a focus on soldiers throughout history. 

“Did you need something, Eric?” 

The glimpse of confusion on Eric’s face is almost enough to make him wonder if he’s acting suspiciously. But Aaron knows better, he’s never been one for small talk and that isn’t going to change now.

“Thought you’d come and find me by now.” 

Aaron makes a point of not clenching his jaw, of not holding his breath. An excellent choice when Eric continues, tips his chin toward the table. “You really telling me that there’s nothing there? Anna said you might have found something? Something I can use?”

Eric is here about the journals, hoping for some new piece of evidence that he can use to justify an exhibit. A piece of evidence that Aaron doesn’t have to give him.

An answer that Eric isn’t keen to accept. 

“Come on,” Eric bounces on his heels. “Maybe I can help? Anna’s doing some art stuff so I know she can’t have been too useful. Which one do you need to process next?”

Aaron tries to reframe him again. Tells Eric that the journals aren’t ready, that Aaron will get to them later. That Eric will be the first person that Aaron calls if it turns out that any of them have even the hint of a love letter or hint of a crush in them.

Eric pushes again and Aaron glances toward the clock on his desk. “I have an appointment. If you don’t mind, I need to lock up.”

Any relief that Aaron feels when Eric agrees, only to wait for Aaron in the main area next to the portrait still on the table. It takes Aaron everything he has to not call him Alex, to not transplant their faces.

Especially when Eric starts rambling again. The half memories, the discomfort with his given name, those were easy enough to play off as an active imagination on the days he wishes it weren’t true. If he lies to himself, maybe he misheard Anna that day.

Maybe he misheard and that’s why there’s such a visceral reaction. Either way, he knows that Eric is the source of his current discomfort, and as such, needs to be dealt with.

Politely. 

They are co-workers after all, which means he can’t just tell him to fuck off.

“I don’t know what you think five more minutes is going to do,” Aaron says when he hits the elevator button. “But there’s nothing you can say in the time it takes me to get to my car that will change anything. Why don’t you--”

Eric steps through the doors first when they open. “If you know what I’m looking for, then it means less work for you, right? And less chance something gets written off.”

Aaron knows what Eric is looking for. Knows the names even before Eric rattles off his list. John Laurens. Alexander Hamilton. And of the aides that might have been camped with them. Eric is looking for Aaron Burr’s letters. Is looking for anything from anyone that he can use to talk about how the American Revolution wasn’t as straight as people like to pretend.

Eric is looking for John Laurens.

Suddenly the information in his head twists. Eric is not looking for something that can justify his exhibit. It isn’t a chance to scratch his own ego.

Eric is trying to lure a deadman out of hiding. Trying to tell him that it’s okay. Look, look, they can be celebrated now. If he’s out there, he can come home.

Aaron doesn’t know what to do with this thought process. With the thought of Eric pacing the exhibit, looking for an unfamiliar face. Looking for a squint of recognition, a hand stroking the glass to a love letter a little too fondly. 

Beside him, Eric is still listing off details. Names. Places. Aaron twists, has it in his head to tell the man to write it all down for him. That he’ll cross reference things as he goes. 

Eric hears it the same moment he does.

A car misfiring, Aaron tells himself. It’s just a coworker off to lunch but it’s too late to slow his heart, especially when Eric is clutching at his chest. 

Aaron shouldn’t want to check for blood. Shouldn’t want to rush to his side, they’re two grown men who have been startled in a parking garage and it’s absolutely ridiculous.

Without another word, Aaron turns and takes the final steps to his car.

Tells himself he’s not fleeing.

\----

Anna is sitting on his desk when Aaron gets to work the next morning.

Something that is frankly unsettling considering he’s pretty sure he locked it the night before. Have they given her a key to his office? Did she ask a janitor?

Aaron can’t get angry if it was the janitor. Mr. Richards is a nice enough old man, and Aaron knows he’d never want to get in anyone’s way. If there was supposedly some paper or artifact in Aaron’s office that Anna needed, he would have folded immediately.

“Eric told me about yesterday.” She still hasn’t looked up from whatever it is that she’s reading, and Aaron waits awkwardly by the door for her to continue. “I thought perhaps I should explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain.” Really. Eric was being obnoxious yesterday, but it isn’t like Eric being pushy is anything new.

“Sometimes he likes to joke that the war still haunts him--” Anna’s lip quirks as she turns over the book-- “Though according to this reviewer here, he’s never been.”

“Reviewer?”

Anna hums, glancing up at him before returning her gaze to the cover. Avoiding his gaze. “When we met, he’d already published his first book. Beautiful historical fiction. I really did think that’s what he was going to do with the rest of his life.”

“Eric does seem more fitted for such work.” Creating the facts instead of hunting them down. How the man ever got into such a detail-oriented field, one that required so much patience, Aaron doesn’t know.

“Rave reviews all around. Shock that he hadn’t served in Iraq or Afghanistan-” There’s a flutter of pages, more fiddling, though she doesn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular- “Of course, I know that he was 16 when he started writing. It was one of the things we bonded over, just how vivid our dreams were.”

It’s a dance, Aaron realizes. He’s being invited to step inside, to confirm what Anna thinks she knows. 

“Of course,” Anna admits, looking sheepish. “I never was one for writing them out. But I did plenty of art. Talking to Eric… made things make sense.”

When did they meet? She’d mentioned school back then, but was it high school? College? Had either of them known before? Suspected? Had either of them sat in history class, bile rising in their throats?

Was there a moment when they both knew the other knew? Did Eric propose the next day because clearly, clearly they were meant to be, why postpone the obvious? Did Anna put him off? Say that in this lifetime she wanted to make something of herself? Do something first? That women have so many options that they didn’t before?

“It helps to talk about it, you know.”

What Aaron knows is that it’s time for work and Anna is in his way. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

Anna barely shifts when he sets his bag down, though now she looks at him fully. “Aaron-- Eric told me about how you reacted to in the parking garage.”

How he reacted? Aaron hadn’t been the one clutching himself. Hadn’t been the one to panic so openly. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Okay.” Anna reaches over, squeezes his shoulder as if they are old friends, as if she has not seemingly just confirmed that he is the man who killed her husband hundreds of years ago. “But you know where to find me if you want to, alright?”

\---

If the conversation with Anna felt like a dance, avoiding Eric is swerving out of traffic to prevent a car accident. Being an educator means that Eric’s job is primarily focused on tour groups and creating plans for school children, not harassing the archivists, but he seems to be making every excuse he can today. 

“Well if it isn’t the man I’ve been looking for, Aaron- Aaron-”

Snapping that Eric should call him Mr. Henderson will only look more suspicious, so instead Aaron quells the mischief with a look. 

As if deniability means a damn thing to Eric. “As much as I hate to ask, do you think I should be looking further into the whole Jefferson and Madison thing?”

Maybe Aaron should call his boss, let them know he isn’t feeling well. 

It isn’t even that much of a lie.

“Jefferson was always, well, Jefferson- I preferred not to pay him much mind,” Eric continues, drops into the seat across from Aaron. “But some of his letters do look a bit desperate for Jimmy boy to come live nearby.”

The truth is, Aaron doesn’t remember much about Jefferson at all, much less his personal relationships. But saying as much is admitting it and admitting he remembers anything--

“I wonder if they were reborn together.” Always rushing through, Eric. Never caring where his feet landed. “I like to think that’s why me and ‘Liza are here. That true love is something that echoes, draws us back.”

Aaron stops breathing.

Closes his eyes.

Waits.

But Eric is still rambling on. 

“I knew the moment I saw her--” Eric is a child, delighted to have someone to share with finally, someone who knows-- “It was electric, Aaron. Love. That’s got to be the reason. Everything stitching itself together just so, the universe delighted at the chance to experience something so right again.”

Aaron thinks of himself, six years old, wandering around a park asking for ‘Theodosia.’

Thinks of the journals filled with nothing but that name, as if he were using it to practice his penmanship. 

Eric is still talking.

Aaron knows as soon as he opens his mouth that he should shut it again. Should walk out. Should leave on his own, call his boss, let them know there’s something going on. Find Anna and tell her to get Eric out of his office. Any of these things.

Anything but what he does do. “I guess that’s why Laurens isn’t here.”

Eric’s mouth shuts with a satisfying click, and for a moment, Aaron wonders if this might come to blows. Wonders if a split lip would make his chest ache any less. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s why you’re looking for him, isn’t?” Aaron leans back in his chair, dragging his eyes up and down Eric’s body. A cruel appraisal. “Feeling guilty about having killed him?”

There’s an easy blow waiting for him, but Eric doesn’t take it. Doesn’t mention the blood on Aaron’s hands, even though it was his own. 

It feels strange to be the one catching people off guard for once. To have the upper hand rather than waiting in the shadows. 

His laugh is humorless when Eric insists he doesn’t know what Aaron is talking about, that John died in the war. “Do you think he kept the love letters you wrote him next to the ones you wrote about your wife? Which one do you think he stroked before riding into battle for a war that was already won?”

Eric looks as sick as Aaron has felt since he realized who the man was, but he gives no chance for a comeback. Instead Aaron keeps going, the same way Eric always does, uncaring of the damage. 

“Sometimes,” Aaron says, “Sometimes the universe writes love stories just to watch them burn.”

This time, this time it is Eric who flees. 

There is no sense of victory in that. No more than there was in being rushed across the Hudson. 

No rush of adrenaline as he slowly stands up and locks the door to his office, unwilling to deal with any more ghosts. When he returns to his seat, he withdraws the small book from his bottom desk drawer, strokes his thumb over Theodosia’s scrawling script on the cover. 

Let Eric have his glory hunt. Let him search high and low for a man who probably has no wish to be found. Who might not even exist.

The Theodosias do not. Of this, Aaron is sure. True love is not enough to resurrect them but he does know this- that if they were out there, there is no form, no continent, no haze of memories that would have kept them parted this long. This is the only contentment Aaron allows himself.

It might be ashes, but at least, unlike Eric, he is not burning himself to the ground.


End file.
